College Board hits back after DeSantis admin floats new AP course changes

Under renewed pressure from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, the organization responsible for administering Advanced Placement courses said it won’t alter its psychology course to meet the state’s oppressive demands. 

In a statement Thursday, College Board shared parts of a letter its representatives sent to DeSantis’ administration saying the group wouldn’t alter its psychology course’s curriculum to remove references to sexual orientation and gender identity. The move follows the Republican administration’s push for College Board to sanitize parts of its AP African American history course. (Read a little more on that pressure campaign in my ReidOut Blog post from late January.)

College Board recently received an inquiry from DeSantis’ administration asking if any of its AP courses would need to be modified to fit new state restrictions on classroom discussions about gender identity and sexual orientation, The Washington Post reported Thursday. The new restrictions expand upon limitations set by an anti-LGBTQ law enacted last year — one critics refer to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

College Board wrote in its letter to the DeSantis administration:

[College Board] will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics. Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for careers in the discipline. The learning objective within AP Psychology that covers gender and sexual orientation has specifically been raised by some Florida districts relative to these recent regulations. That learning objective must remain a required topic, just as it has been in Florida for many years. As with all AP courses, required topics must be included for a course to be designated as AP.

The statement goes on to say College Board is “heartbroken by the possibility of Florida students being denied the opportunity to participate in this or any AP course. … AP opposes both censorship and indoctrination, and is animated by a deep respect for the intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike.”

The DeSantis administration’s effort to erase LGBTQ people from psychology curricula should be seen as a way to hide the impact of anti-LGBTQ bigotry, the very kind DeSantis is known to practice.